How to transfer data from a damaged external hard drive?

My WD 2tb external hard drive accidentally fell last week so I bought a new external hard drive and transfer the files from the old to the new. But now when I connect this hard drive (old one) in my Mac, the icon doesn’t show up on the it usually does and I cannot open the hard drive at all.

I tried to recover data by using Yodot Mac Data Recovery but it said there was no volume in the file. Can anybody please give me some advice to recover my data?

3 Answers

Drives that are running and banged tend to crash the heads into the plater killing it. Similar to how a old style record player stylist worked with a vinyl disk. In that case the disk would end up with a deep scratch making playing the music impossible without it skipping.

If your disk tools can't access the disk there is nothing more you can do here your self.

Its time to send the drive out to a recovery lab. There they can open the disk and replace the damaged head/s and if the media is still readable get your data off. I must warn you this is very expensive and if the disk platters are damaged you may not get some of your files or they maybe to badly damaged to usable.

Please do not use any software to try and recover your data, you will seriously compound the recovery.

The HDD will have suffered from a physical issue and in require clean room work, the HSA will have come into direct contact with the disk surface and probably require exchanging, given that this a WD hard drive you will not the micro-jogs or other details, not least have a clean room / bench and skills to change the heads, take it to a pro DR company.

Try installing Ubuntu and most of the time it can recognize disks that Windows and Macs won't. Then you can copy your files from the disk to another storage medium through the Ubuntu system. You can download U until for free and it can be booted from a DVD or usb drive without installing it on your machine.